We don't need no publication

We all start out wanting to get published, because that's what writers are for, right? That's what we do, how we validate ourselves. We twist ourselves in knots yearning for it. Like going to work, getting married, having kids – we do it because, well, that's what we're supposed to do. No thought. No question. No uncomfortable explanations or justifications needed. Follow the herd, lemming-like, over the cliff of despair.

But until we can say why it is we want to get published, rather than just, I want to get published, we will never be happy writing, even if we do get that 2 book mega-deal.

Understanding why we're doing it helps us discover what it is we need to get out of our work, or gives us the opportunity to change our focus if we find we're doing it for the wrong reasons.

So why do you write? Well, it's going to be one of three things, or somewhere in between.

For Yourself

Perhaps you write for therapy, to excise demons from your past, to examine yourself, to discover yourself. Maybe you write so you can say all those things you don't have the courage to say to all the people who annoy you in real life, to purge yourself of anger, annoyance and upset. Maybe it's the idea of writing that excites you, to be able to think of yourself as a writer. Maybe it's what you write about - illicit, private things that move you. Perhaps you only ever write for an audience of one. Or perhaps you write what you'd really love to read.

For the Reader

Maybe it's all about the reader. You seek only to entertain them, to transport them. Perhaps you devour all the bestsellers in the hope you'll see the ingredient you need for your own work to be successful. You learn that it's all about entertainment, accessibility and universality – that it's stories that readers want. And if it's for the reader, then it's for the money, as readers will pay for stories they want to read.

For the Writing

Or perhaps your dream is to learn and understand the craft until you are fluent in it, to strive for something unique, something more relevant, more challenging that what has gone before. Perhaps you want your work to transcend you, your reader and the tools you have available to you, for your creation to be greater than the sum of its parts – to be the greatest book you could ever write.

And if you wade through all that and still think, actually, all I want is to get published, then you can self-publish and be happy, right?

The Writer's Journey

"Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art." - Konstantin Stanislavsky

I started writing because I liked the idea of myself as a writer. Now I write because I want to become the best storyteller I can. And if publication comes along while I'm doing it, I'll look it squarely in the eye before biting its hand off to the elbow.

But I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

The writing advice you need but don't want

A religious daily word-count does not make you a writer

1000 words a day may make you feel like a writer, but a 1000 words of crap just makes you a crap one. Writing isn't just about producing words – it's about creating stories, developing characters, imagining worlds. The words that reveal all that are just the icing on the cake. Prose, no matter how lovely, is just prose – without character and narrative to drive it, people will tire by paragraph 2.

Sometimes you need to do nothing

I'm the first one to tell you to maximise your writing time, but sometimes you need to just shut-down, wander around, and empty your mind. Clear the air, clear some space, give yourself a breather and day-dream; people watch, observe the world around you – with no more agenda than being at peace. Get in touch with yourself and yourself within the world. This will not only re-charge your imagination, but give you an opportunity to remember what it's like to just observe and feel.

Keep your head in the clouds while your feet are on the ground

Or vice-versa. Sometimes I get so tied up with the human-condition and how to write about it that I forget that some of the best stories are just totally out there – Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz for example. Don't cramp your imagination too much with reality, and likewise, if you're a dreamer, don't forget to keep it relevant.

A character driven piece is no excuse for a crap story

Disappointed Reader: What the hell is this? The character doesn't change, there's no story or narrative propulsion. Nothing happens. In fact, if I wasn't married to you, I wouldn't have got beyond page one.

Bone-headed Writer: Yeah, but that's because it's character driven.

Please.

A difficult subject matter is a difficult sell

No matter how scintillating your narrative is, certain subjects are going to turn readers off. No one is going to read your great story if they are going to put the book down as soon as they read the blurb.

Pants now, pay later

So, you need to develop character, construct a plot, define a setting, hone dialogue, then have a powerful voice and compelling narrative style to reveal it all? Scary. Far easier to just crack on with the manuscript and leave all that to your natural-born genius, luck, or later.

And you know which one it's going end up being.

Ernest H. said that the first draft of anything is shit, but you could always try and make it a little less shit with a little more forethought.

What Theatre Can Teach about Storytelling

Imagine telling a story without narrative and without description; a story with no 'telling', no explanations of a character's speech or thoughts, why they said what they said, did what they did. No room for authorial voice, the writerly ego. No plugging the gaps in your story, or justifications for unconvincing character actions.

Sound like hell? This is the very hell that playwrights face. Welcome to story-telling bootcamp.

In truth there are theatrical devices that allow for 'telling' and for revealing character thoughts (soliloquy, chorus, monologue) but these are used less frequently in modern theatre pieces, and even if the playwright allows himself these indulgences, the bulk of the writing is pure dialogue.

So what's my point? In fact, I have several:

Narrative without narrative

The two meanings of 'narrative' – a story, the 'structure of the incidents' and the process of narrating the story - are useful when marking the distinction between story (or narrative) revealed through scenes and story (or narrative) revealed through narrative.

Writing for the stage teaches you how to tell a story through scenes. Aristotle's phrase to describe plot - 'the structure of the incidents' – is useful here as it highlights that the order in which scenes are presented becomes essential to the telling of story in the theatre. It's not just what happens next, but why it happens, each scene must be a necessary and natural consequence of the ones that preceed it.

Just imagine how much more powerful your story could be if it could stand up by its scenes alone. Just imagine how much more transferable to film.

The effectiveness of the 3 Act structure

Three acts equate to a beginning, a middle and an end. There are good reasons why plays are broken into acts – they prevent meandering storylines, sagging 'middles' and provide narrative drive and ascending dramatic tension. Acts are so good that Shakespeare uses 5 of them in his plays. All of them. Further discussions on the 3 Act structure here and here.

Less room for unconvincing characters

In the theatre every character in your story is going to undergo the kind of analysis and scrutiny that only a bunch of people with each of them focusing on one character can give you.

You give an actor a script and she's going to see the story through the eyes of that character and that character alone. She's going to ask you questions like 'so what's my motivation?' and say things like 'I don't think my character would do this.' Even the spear-carrier needs to understand and believe his character.

So all your major characters must have convincing arcs and believable actions, your minor characters must be consistent and whole.

Looking at your story from the angle of each and every character as an actor playing that character would can only improve your story.

Dialogue isn't just stuff people say

When it's the only technique available to you the dialogue has to advance the story and reveal character and be expositional and be convincing and fluent. Sound hard? Yes, of course it's hard, but how great will your dialogue be if it achieves all of these things.

I once attended Robert McKee's Story Seminar in London and he said something with regard to this that has always stayed with me. He was addressing when a voice-over can be justified in a film and his test was – if the film can stand up without the voice-over, then the voice-over is justified. The point being that the voice-over, the 'narrative voice', isn't making up for flaws in plot or character, but in fact adding value to an already great story.

The Yin-yang of Writing

Our time on this earth is finite. By the time we come to really understand that we've already acquired a whole heap of responsibilities that threaten to devour all those precious hours we haven't already wasted. No wonder many blogs on writing (including this one) bang on incessantly about maximising your writing time, using it more efficiently, squeezing everything writerly you can out of the limited time you have available.

But that's not all there is to writing.

Reading many writing blogs (including this one) you'd be forgiven for thinking that writing is all about craft, process, discipline, tools, word-count, technique. Those things are very important, but they are only one side of the writing coin.

The reason you can't move for advice on these things is that they are easy to explain, easy to understand, and consequently with a bit of work, easy to learn.

But where's the magic? Where's the individuality? What makes one work more powerful, more unique, more different than anything else?

There are two aspects to the art of writing – the ability to create, and the ability to craft – one cannot exist without the other. Pure creation without craft will be whimsical, self-indulgent, irrelevant. Craft without creation would be sterile, flat, and without substance.

So the writer must be bi-polar and adopt a two stage approach to writing – the creation phase, where all the whimsy and irrelevance must be indulged; and the craft phase, where everything learnt from all those writers' blogs and books should be selectively applied to what's been created.

But there are times when you need to work with both the left and right side of your brain – when you need to invent something within constraints, when you realise you need a particularly scene, a new character, a plot twist – and it needs to comply with the demands of the story you have crafted.

Ouch.

This may seem scary – without freedom how can you create? There are techniques for addressing this, but don't be afraid; the imagination can thrive in a cramped space, it can be re-inforced by restriction. Just get your pen out and try it. You have to get character x from point a to point b which is impossible bearing in mind his personality and situation. Or is it? What could push this character to that point, what would need to happen to get him there? When all your imagination is brought to bear on this limited space, when it's squeezed into such a small spot, it will be heightened and focused and will take your story into places you never imagined. Not yet anyway.